What is “Fake Work”?
"Fake work" are tasks that give you the appearance of productivity but don’t actually contribute to completing meaningful results. Often fake work tasks are easy tasks that make you feel busy or give you a feeling of accomplishment, but don’t move you any closer towards your ultimate goals.
You can think of fake work as self-assigned busy work. Self-assigned busy work which is procrastination (as it allows you to avoid more challenging or important tasks). Examples of "fake work" include:
- Spending more time organizing or preparing to do work than actually doing the work
- Focusing on low-priority tasks instead of high-priority ones that will have a greater impact on achieving goals. Including:
- Collecting reference images or inspiration (Pinterest, TikTok, etc)
- Buying and organizing new art supplies
- Fine tuning a pretty website
- Taking art requests
- Checking email or social media (including replying to comments
But doing the real work is hard. The stakes are higher, because there’s a risk of failure.
Now that we know what Fake work is - what is “real work”?
Table of Contents
What is “Fake Work”?What is “Real Work”? 3-part strategy for starting “Real Work”1. Make it your top priority. 2. Put it in your calendar. 3. Take the MVP approach. Conclusion Reference
What is “Real Work”?
Real work is what you do when someone says ‘the project needs to be finished in 24 hours’. You cut the crap and take the most direct path to your goal, ignoring non-essential tasks.
And deep down, Katie knew that getting real, paying clients through the door was the best way to improve as a coach and actually build her practice. That was the real work - asking people to actually pay.
With any project, it’s important to start with the real work. It gets the adrenaline pumping, and when there’s something at stake, you have wat more motivation to improve.
So my advice to Katie over breakfast was this: do the real work. Take the most direct route to your objective. Tinkering with website design and marketing can be useful – but not as a cosy distraction.
3-part strategy for starting “Real Work”
for *finally* doing a task you’ve been putting off for ages:
1. Make it your top priority.
When you feel averse to a specific task, literally anything else will feel really tempting (taking out the bins, writing an email to your friend, cooking a 3-course meal). So, ruthlessly prioritize the exact task you’re putting off. The longer you let it wait, the more you’ll associate that task with stress and failure... making it even harder to start.
2. Put it in your calendar.
Choose a block of time (sooner rather than later) to do the work, and put it in your calendar. This won’t automatically get you to do the thing. But it'll protect your time, and take away the “I just don’t have enough time” excuse. Bonus point if you set up a notification for 30 minutes before the time.
3. Take the MVP approach.
The startup world has this concept of ‘minimum viable product’. What’s the most basic (yet functional) version of your product that you can create and test out?
This lets you get real-world feedback faster, and stop being a perfectionist (it’s just a crappy first draft after all). You also get momentum from actually doing something tangible.
The MVP method is incredibly helpful for overcoming procrastination. Aim to do the most basic version of the task you’re procrastinating on. For Katie, that involved drawing up a Google Doc with her offering and prices, and emailing it to a bunch of prospective clients with the link. No fancy website, no paid marketing, no working with agencies.
This all boils down to one piece of advice: take the most direct route to your goal. Sure you'll mistakes. But that'll accelerate your progress more than just tweaking your master plan and making no mistakes at all.
Conclusion
Be clear about your priorities and focus on tasks that will have the greatest impact on achieving your goals. It's also important to regularly assess your tasks and activities to make sure they are contributing to meaningful progress.